Étienne-Joseph Floquet

Étienne-Joseph Floquet was a French composer, mainly of operas. He was born in Aix-en-Provence and began his career by writing church music, before moving to Paris in 1767. There, Floquet made a name for himself with the requiem he wrote for the funeral of the composer Jean-Joseph de Mondonville in 1772. Floquet's first work for the Paris Opéra, the ballet héroïque L'union de l'amour et les arts, was a triumph, enjoying 60 performances between its premiere in September 1773 and January 1774. The audience at the premiere was so enthusiastic that the performance had to be stopped several times because of the applause and, at the final curtain, Floquet was presented on stage, the first composer in the history of the Paris Opéra to enjoy such an honour. However, the arrival of the German composer Christoph Willibald Gluck in Paris later that year changed French musical taste and Floquet's style became unfashionable. After the failure of his next opera, Azolan, Floquet decided to travel to Italy to perfect his musical education. There he studied composition under Nicola Sala in Naples and counterpoint under Padre Martini in Bologna, where he turned momentarily back to church music composing a Te Deum.